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What's a feeling you sometimes experience that you don't have a name for?
Sometimes, after I get home from work, I have a surprisingly strong urge to not be wearing socks. Like, my feet themselves YEARN to be free of their cotton confines!
I have no idea how or why this happens, only that it does sometimes. I also don't really have a name for it -- or even an easy way to put it into words. It feels similar to how restless leg syndrome manifests for me, only instead of the compulsion to move my feet, it's a compulsion to not be stuck in socks.
What feelings do you have that aren't really nameable/describable? Do your best to put them into words in whatever way you can!
"Feelings" can be anything -- physical or emotional.
Sometimes when I'm taking a late inter-city train I fall asleep listening to music. After a while I open my eyes, I don't know where I'm at, just watching the train moving in the darkness with some street lights out the windows. While I'm still in a half awake state I listen to the song that is playing at that moment, usually something from auto-play, and I have this weird ecstatic feeling.
I traveled by train recently, for the first time in over a year or two. I forgot about this feeling, makes me long for the easier times in my life.
Very timely one. I suppose it is describable, but not in a word alone.
Every year, mid-march, I start to feel the lightness of spring. The days are beginning to feel juuust long-enough, the weather is juuust warm enough, the snow is melted juuust enough to see some grass and a few early flowers, my winter SAD lifts, and all the potential of the year ahead is spread out in front of me. It's the confluence hope, relief, energy, brightness, contentment all in one.
I feel a similar thing around August September when the air suddenly shifts one day and it switches into autumn. It's a nice cool, like a sunset.
I love that feeling so much.
The most vivid example of it I experienced was in 2012 when I was visiting Prague. One evening I was out on the balcony where I was staying putting some laundry out to dry and all the sudden a calm, yet strong gust of wind came in. Within seconds autumn started.
This makes me think of those videos of cows released from their barns for the first time after winter: they frolic, they’re joyous, delighting in the spring.
Is that not spring fever?
Ahh, you know maybe it is. I guess I've never associated my experience with that term. Fever just makes it sound so frenetic and bacchanal.
I'm sure a hundred years or so ago it would've been a celebration but thanks to indoor heating and such it isn't such an event any more.
March is the loveliest month of the year.
My wife calls this TSF: That Spring Feeling, and treats it as her official (unofficial) start to Spring.
It's the smell, as well. I think it's referred to as Petrichor, but feel free to correct me on that. When the cold, dead nothing-smell of winter finally lifts, and you can actually smell soil, trees, air... it's rejuvenating. Even in the city where everything smells like exhaust and grease anyway, I still get it. It's the best.
That feeling you get as a kid on late night car drives
...playing my gameboy in the backseat using the passing streetlights as the only light source to see what the hell I am doing in-game.
(thanks for the nostalgia)
The trick was holding it up for the headlights behind you to light up. Unless you were supposed to be asleep and not playing Dr. Mario
Christ, I've got a very specific memory this is all evoking where I was fighting Koga in the back seat doing exactly that with the lights. I realized the RBY gym leader fight music was real good, so since I was struggling with the light I just held my GBC up to my ear and listened for a while... The things you tuck away in your memory, huh?
Streetlights used to be little magical balls of light.... Because I needed glasses, but they were pretty.
Yeah brains can be neat!
I think that kind of time is a rarely encountered treasure for human beings: you're not responsible for anything, nothing is expected or required of you, you are alone but not lonely, you can choose to converse but you choose not to, and there's a quiet expectation that you're passively in motion towards a future destination without neither anxiety nor excitement.
Perhaps this is what monks in solitude aim achieve with decades of asceticism.
Edit: or if you're @paradoxFox :)
This is exactly what I strive to feel on long bike rides, early in the morning during summer. Nobody needs me for a few hours, I can be alone without worry, I'm not trying to rush anywhere and I don't have pressing needs when I get back. I can just... Exist.
Lovely.
Ooh, that's a good one. Still get it as adult sometimes in the right context, though it'd be so much nicer if streetlights were still warm orange.
I get a sense of that from the start of the movie Collateral, before it turns violent of course.
I thought of another one:
Let’s say I buy a book that’s the first in a series, or a game with a bunch of DLC.
Even if I didn’t like the book or the game, I will still feel compelled to buy “the rest of it” because it feels “incomplete” to me otherwise.
I have to genuinely fight this urge pretty often. I’ve gotten pretty good about it…
…until the stuff goes on sale.
If the discount goes low enough, my vigilance loses. I own the ebooks for several different series I will never read, simply because the remaining titles went on sale for $2 each and I already had the first one. I have “complete” versions of games I do not like and won’t ever play, just because it cost me $3 to fill them out fully.
My brain honestly feels that the completely abstract “sense of completeness” I’ll get is worth more than the $2 or $3 I’m paying out in those moments.
The Completionist Urge. You are truly cursed to consume every jump-the-shark moment of every franchise.
I have a similar instinct, but it is directed toward things that aren't quite so neat and defined, like wanting to collect all the plants of a given genus or wanting to collect all the different mints of a given coin — I think because I find the process of finding them addictive.
Pursuing this instinct leads to having way too many things, though, so I've managed to cultivate it into a similar but more minimalist goal: to find just my top three items in a given category.
So, for a given genus of plant that I'm tempted to collect, I can only have the three very best species/varieties. This still gives me the thrill of the hunt (because to pick my favorites, I still need to go out and find as many of them as possible to compare), but I rarely acquire a new one, and when I do, I have to sell or give an old one away. Ranking items also gives me pleasure, so that aspect just enhances the hobby.
When I'm browsing real estate listings that I have no money for nor a true desire to move to. It's just a sort of warped lust for land and property. I scroll property assessment values, tax increases, mortgage events and zoning/development applications for them the way other people scroll Instagram (I guess). I'd sometimes even bookmark them to see how soon they might be sold or at what final price. When I'm feeling especially insane I might look up topographical info on them like slope of the land, any survey attached, whether the land is wet or dry, if it sits on karst prone bedrock, the dominant tree species, what it looks like from steer view etc.
It's like wanderlust but for real property.
I have no such feelings for interior decor nor rental properties, which imply it's just an insane greed for sheer land.
The millennial curse of being born too late to robber-baron the American continent, too early to colonize Mars lol
Maybe the repressed Canadian version of Manifest Destiny lol
you guys have so much land lying around haha, sure it's cold and inhospitable but i bet there's still plenty to go around lol—in fact I just checked & you can get almost 1sq mi in N Ontario for C$285,000! "Access in winter would be by snowmobile" however... but i mean once you were there, why would you want to leave?
Wow! A sq mile is 640 Ac is 259 hectares! For land that huge it shouldn't be a problem to clear a patch for an ultralight landing. Assuming it's deeply forested one could probably survive by hunting . Yup land lust.
When a cat or dog you know feels secure enough to rest their head on you, and you feel like you’re being knighted or bestowed with a great honor.
I'm convinced that this exact feeling (just amplified) is a good 50–75% of the giddy, euphoric sensation you get from starting a new romantic relationship.
When I feel like I should be doing something productive but don't have the motivation. So I do an activity that isn't that enjoyable but also isn't that productive.
When I decide not to make a frivolous $20 purchase, but later have to make an unexpected $40 purchase. Then I feel justified to make the $20 purchase since it's comparatively smaller, even though I have less money than I did earlier.
I think that word you're looking for is "depression."
ADHD guilt also fits the bill. But I don't need to be diagnosing anyone.
my whole life changed due to some random dude's internet ADHD diagnosis lol, go for it
not actually directed at you specifically @Promonk, but I came in here actually just to say: Hey, if there's a feeling you have & you can't figure out what it is, I'm not saying that's a reason to find a therapist/counselor, but if you do then you'll definitely be able to better identify and describe that feeling (and probably figure out some other stuff too).
There are absolutely listicle-style emotional concepts from other languages that English isn't super specific on, but also like for years I would get this prickly sort of reaction when people tried to help me do something, and I thought "Oh, it's just that I'm afraid they're being condescending," etc. Actually nope, CPTSD lol. It's not all "let's talk about your childhood," but kinda it is—at least for me. And now I know why I'm having these feelings & it honestly feels much better.
Procrastination. People who aren't procrastinators don't get it.
A helpful primer from Wait But Why
I have actually read a couple of books by therapists with a career's worth of experience counseling procrastinators that gave me some useful insight. But some people are lucky and just don't face the challenge.
Being hungry, but not knowing what to eat.
I have a related but differently nuanced feeling - being hungry, but disgusted or bored with any of the food choices available. Sometimes to the point of nausea or irritation at the thought of eating.
When I know I should eat anyway, I'll usually just grab something bland or crunchy but nutritious - carrots, an apple, crackers and cheese. And end up with a weird yearning for foods I can't name, but recognize when I later get to eat them.
I'm battling this insane feeling/habit right now where I get myself into some kind of awkward or uncomfortable position (for sitting or standing somewhere) and I know I feel uncomfortable, but I have a stronger feeling of, I dunno, stubbornness? Where I don't want to move. But why, it's so dumb, I could move and be more comfortable dumbass.
I mentioned the socks thing in my post, but what I didn’t mention was that I got home and, instead of removing my socks immediately, I spent thirty minutes pulling at them, rubbing my feet against one another, and just generally being annoyed by them but not doing anything about it.
I could have just, you know, taken off the socks. But for some reason I didn’t?
It’s like being annoyed by the background noise of a TV you’re not watching, but choosing to turn it down rather than off.
This is all to say: I totally get what you’re talking about.
Executive dysfunction! Literally: the inability to execute a task -any task- no matter how useful, helpful, necessary, or wanted the outcome may be. You know you're capable, you know you're able, you know you want to ffs, but you simply cannot for some ineffable reason. It's almost like your brain doesn't believe the reward will happen, somehow, or won't be worth the effort. It makes no logical sense, but it happens all the time, for all kinds of things.
Executive dysfunction is not:
Laziness. If it were laziness, you'd be enjoying not doing the thing/what you're doing instead.
Stubbornness. Stubbornness has a goal in mind. There's a real, externally related reason you're not doing the thing/doing the other thing instead.
Depression. I mean, the two are not mutually exclusive, obviously, but medication and coping strategies for executive dysfunction will often help more with depression than the other way around.
So anyway, that's what it's called! Now take your damn socks off, you'll feel better lol.
And @kaffo change positions, you'll feel better!
But also, it's ok if you can't right now.
Hu well TIL thanks for the post!
Discomfort Inertia, let's call it
Oh oh oh oh oh! I get this!
Do you ever use the tiny lil screwdriver/wrench they send you with the box of furniture parts, even though you have a perfectly fine and far superior option already available? Just sounds familiar maybe : )
Hahahaha I've done for sure, but not out of stubbornness, more out of just not even thinking about it. Or less frequently: "I probably don't have the exact size and I can't be arsed to check".
These days I have a decently organised tool drawer and check there first.
Ha! I have the feet yearning right now!
I get a strong feeling to put on headphones, lay on the couch, and stare at the ceiling in the dark. I'm not usually sad or sleepy or reflective, it's just a feeling I get that says "grab your headphones and turn off the lights". Feels warm.
I get that with autism but that's more "everything is too much and this is a way to make the world go away". I'll also add a weighted blanket and blindfold.
This would be a hilarious way to find out I have autism. I get it about once every other month, is that a normal interval for it?
Do you find clothing labels or elastics irritating? Theatre sounds way too loud? Frustrated when thing that's scheduled to happen suddenly doesn't? Certain sound or texture of food or kinds of materials touching your skin unbearable?
Not really unless it's scratchy.
Can't say I do.
No, I'm pretty happy with laissez faire timing.
I don't like having greasy hands after eating, maybe more so than average. Like I'll go wash my hands after eating pub food and others don't appear to do the same.
Just as a counter-argument, my answers probably align with yours here too, and although I’ve never had it severely enough to be diagnosed, it runs in the family for me so I’ve likely got it a bit.
Try these ones on for size:
do you have any siblings (non-gendered word for “bothers and sisters”), niblings (non-gendered word for “nieces and nephews”), or cousins (non-gendered word for “cousins”) who have been diagnosed with autism?
do you think the incidence of autism, adhd, and/or or bipolar within your friends group would likely be higher-than-average or lower-than-average (I’m not letting you choose “probably about average” as a choice here because that’s just the default position of a brain trying to shortcut its experience as generic or typical, and also it’s not a useful answer here)
if you play board games, do you like to pick at or unravel ambiguous game rules that don’t account for every edge case?
do you have good attention to detail, or do you spot things other people might miss? Have people told you that you do, even if you doubt it within yourself?
None of these will be comprehensive of course, but if you resonate with all of them, then it might be something.
Having said that, while I’m pretty sure I’ve got it at least mildly, I don’t think I’ll ever get diagnosed (and indeed don’t think I could get diagnosed) because I’ve already shaped my life to accommodate some of the weaknesses and amplify the strengths that it provides, so it will never cross the threshold of “disrupts my life” that a diagnosis would require
Also, just on question 2) there’s already a very small push here towards “above average” given you’re in Tildes. I don’t know if we have proper statistics, but I feel like I see a higher rate of people discussing neurospicy here than the wider population demographics should predict
Totally agree!
And a caveat to this (and any other such list of traits): do you feel the need to explain your answer and/or have the question clarified/narrowed in scope? I think a "comments" section on any formal autism test would be a huge improvement, because every single neurospicy person I've encountered will tend to answer such questions with "yeah, kinda, but..." or "not unless ____," or some other qualified variation.
One that got me was "do you pay special attention to numbers, ie license plates," and I was like "noooo, I don't have the numbers autism!"
And then a week later caught myself being delighted at seeing cars with consecutive numbered plates right next to each other.
Ohhh. Lol
The problem with questions like this is that everyone lives their life in first person
“No I don’t pay special attention, just the normal amounts as everyone else does” from an internal perspective is a totally valid answer, and yet might not be at all accurate from an external perspective
When my partner was going for ADHD diagnosis, the psych she was talking to usually diagnosed children and therefore part of the process was usually asking the parents for their perspective. However, by the time you reach adulthood you’ve usually developed a few coping mechanisms which hide the underlying issue that young kids definitely haven’t sorted out yet
So when the psych was asking questions, the initial answer to something like “do you lose or misplace your keys” was a “no, never” with the unspoken “because my keys have a single place that they always have to be, and as soon as I get home, my keys always go into the bowl by the front door, because that’s where they belong” which reveals a hidden “and if they’re ever somewhere that’s not the Place They Belong, then they’re actually Lost Forever, because those are the only two states that a thing can be in” so the answer to whether you lose things is actually a solid “yes, except for this coping mechanism I’ve developed over the years”
As a substitute for parents, when my partner got to that part of the process, I came along and was able to provide those unspoken caveats to the questions as they were answered (because we had been together long enough that I saw all the little behaviours over the years), so I think that helped the psych reframe the questions to more easily get at the answers underneath
I remember when I got my ADHD diagnosis, the therapist asked what it was like when I had to wait for things, like in a waiting room or something. I was like, "Well, I'd probably just be on my phone the whole time. If my phone was dead or something it'd be unbearable." Apparently this was a good answer for the diagnosis because she quoted the second part verbatim in her assessment -- but I honestly still find it hard to believe that waiting without something to occupy your mind with like that isn't unbearable for most people! It's very hard to compare yourself to the normal baseline when you've never lived outside your own mind.
Relatedly, I remember being frustrated when I was going to get treatment for depression at my university's free clinic because beforehand in the waiting room they'd have me take the Beck's depression inventory, which is all about comparing the last two weeks compared to "normally." And as someone whose depression had lasted a lot longer than 2 weeks, I wasn't even sure what the "normally" I was supposed to compare it to was.
Ugh, those questionnaires before therapy were the worst. I've since learned that my emotional permanence is absolute garbage (so if the feeling isn't happening right now I will, at best, have a vague recollection of having felt that way before, but it doesn't mean anything) so rating my emotional state for two whole weeks prior was.... well, meaningless to me.
"How much time did you spend feeling depressed?" 1-10
"Idk man, I spent some time curled up on the bathroom floor, so like, call it a 5 on average?"
For context, my partner was ultimately diagnosed with both ADHD and ASD, whereas I only have the ASD and not the ADHD (although I’ve never been diagnosed officially, there’s a strong trend of ASD in my family, which is pretty heritable, so it’s pretty likely I have it)
It feels weird to say, but I could probably sit in a waiting room for most of an hour with zero stimulation before I’d start to get uncomfortable. It’s not something I’d go out of my way to experience, of course, but I think your therapist was right to write down that quote — unless I was being deliberately melodramatic, “unbearable” is not a word that comes to mind for me in that scenario, basically at any extreme of waiting.
Just wanted to provide my experience so you can see how other people might experience things. Note that I suspect ASD without ADHD pushes me even further along that axis than usual, and a neurotypical person would probably have patience somewhere between my benchmark and yours.
I love these neurospicy threads!
As a self diagnosed probably mildly autism spectrum, probably not a very ADHD person (but my wife and kids are!):
I find waiting rooms and similar situations "unbearable" without a smart phone. Or before those, some paperback, which I always kept on me. But it isn't the waiting without stimulation, it's feeling anxious about how to act in a social situation with nothing to do. Needing an escape from that.
If I have to wait in an alone space, like early in the morning, in a car parked really far away from the store and kind of behind a tree. I can stare into space and daydream for an hour, no problem. I always have some project to think about, I might even make progress by just thinking through a plan, no new information necessary. Happy to have some easy quiet time.
I feel this so much
You don't have to have all of those to have autism! I don't have textural issues with clothing. Or issues with movie theatres (but I hate cacophony and loud car exhaust systems).
Sounds like you're a pretty typical kinda guy to me :)
I thought so too haha.
There are a lot of misconceptions here.
Yeah, I figured this is all pretty subjective and it's a spectrum. It's just interesting as I've never considered it as an option. I was surprised this kicked off from the music/darkroom comment, but saying it out loud now makes some sense.
It's a spectrum, yes, but what is often misunderstood is that it is a multidimensional spectrum! Sensory issues are a common theme as, at its core, autism is a condition where the nervous system behaves differently than in neurotypicals.
I didn't believe I was autistic. And then I watched the TV show "Parenthood" end-to-end. Even that show only models a limit range on the multiple axes! It just happens that my presentation is similar to a character introduced late in the show.
Yup, that's why the official diagnosis surveys are many pages long , asks about your entire life from gestation onwards, asks for perspectives from other people in your life, and include a number of hours of professional in person observation while you do things.
@elight I was mostly curious if there were other sensory issues to dovetail, but yeah definitely multidimensional and a spectrum along each of the many axes :)
Oddly, no one else in my life was surveyed. But, yes, multiple tests and hours of interviews.
Oh maybe that's a very young person thing. Did they not ask for response from a teacher or counsellor or long time doctor either?
I was asked (dx a few years ago, early 30s) about close NT friends or family who could fill out a survey about me.... Turns out I do not, in fact, have even a single one of those!
Could be that they're starting to realize it's frequently not possible (or all that helpful)?
LMAO "no I can't be neurodiverse, I'm just a little weird, like my whole family is like this" -- yeah, that's the problem lol
No. Can't say why. Certainly can ask the diagnostician.
It's gonna be different for everyone, but yes, that's probably about how long you, specifically, can go at a normal-life pace before you need to do a "more substantial recharge," as it were.
Listening for cues like that and following those urges will be an inordinate quality of life improvement, I guarantee it. Bonus points for building yourself a 'tism cave, with soft and/or weighed blankets, pillows, fairy lights, or whatever else you find soothing, and letting yourself shut out the world for a while. Closets are nice for this!
This has been a pretty unexpectedly educational thread. I'll give the cave a go the next time I get the feel. Thanks!
I guess the closest term is a “runners high”, but I always find it interesting how resistant my brain is to exercise and in spite of how good I feel afterward. It starts out with a lot of convincing myself that yes in fact now is the best time to be exercising and that my excuses are not good ones. Then the start of my workout I’m always a little grumpy because I’d rather be doing anything else. Then the real interesting experience is feeling that melt away and be replaced by endorphins. It eventually shifts my brain into enjoying the workout and feeling good afterward. Despite that I always repeat that hate-love cycle with working out.
Also yes I really relate to that sock feeling; it feels so cathartic to take them off after wearing them for hours. My friends all thought I was weird when I expressed that to them so I’m glad I’m not alone.
Lord, I can relate a lot here, except my "runners high" I do not think matches the same level of ecstacy that people in general seem to describe.
I'll force myself to do the workout, start feeling the endorphins and sure it's better but it's not exactly what I'd call "high". It's more like a slightly elated feeling and there's also some thoughts of strength and power haha.
But it's not enough to make me come back to it as much as I want, it's a huge uphill battle. I enjoy going for a walk a lot more, being outside and just getting to look at stuff is so much more rewarding to me I dunno.
I got some interesting insight on this front recently. I started Vyvanse for ADHD and it completely changed how I experienced endorphin rushes. Normally I finish exercise like a junky - heightened colors, euphoric state, elevated mood - it's freaking awesome and it pushes me to exercising a few times a day. On the Vyvanse I didn't get the same rush - it was like a muted pleasant feeling - and I found myself less motivated to exercise. I think we all just experience dopamine and endorphin at different levels for different things. I finally understood why so folks don't find exercise enjoyable.
Haha yeah, it's crazy when you realize that not everyone feels the same way you do. Even crazier when you get to experience both sides of the coin.
The "holy shit, is this what it feels like?" moment.
I hope your medication helped you otherwise though!
Makes sense. Autism is a significantly neurodivergent nervous system but each case presents differently on the multidimensional "spectrum". Even "neurotypical" has variance, just within statistical norms.
It's like: kids don't want to get into the bath. Then kids don't want to get out of the bath. I think it is innately human to powerfully resist most anything that is good for us unfortunately : )
that feeling when you bite into a pickle and it’s a little squishier than you expected
zjierb
It’s not relevant to your sock feeling, but your post reminded me of that video.
Gosh, that is an atrocious feeling, I do not like squishy pickles, at all. I will throw out the whole pickle and the rest of the jar if it’s like that.
I'm not sure what to call it, but the feeling that you have a lack of "roots". I was raised in the Bay Area in classic US suburbia, in an area with more strip malls than local culture. I've been fortunate to travel and make friends across the globe, and as we age into our "return to the nest" years I find myself jealous I don't have a little village to return to with deep history, customs, mythology, and family roots. My mom and dad both moved to the area in their late 20s so we don't have that intrinsic connection. There are no old men who sit on the same bench every day who knew my grandma. There are no stories of odd, helpful creatures like brownies or tontu - no monsters to fear like krampus or kelpies. We don't have deep seasonal traditions or family recipes steeped in the local land. I've never had it and I yearn for it deeply.
My partner and I now live in a place with a little more history, a few less strip malls, and an opportunity to learn some of these things. But being as we're still in the US, you get it in bits and pieces. We have the watchers - which is a fun but lesser known lore - and their are a few regional culinary specialities - but overfishing has put the kabosh on many of them. I'd like to build this "thing" that I'm missing so my future kids can have it, but I'm not sure that's actually possible.
It absolutely is possible. Just start doing the thing. If you do it and make it a habit before your kids are born, it'll just be a thing in their lives. My parents did a winter solstice event for my whole childhood with all of their friends. Christmas was for family, but everyone gathered for the solstice as well. We did a solstice play about the changing of the seasons, we had a potluck, and everyone ate and drank and were merry and warm. It lasted for decades, and if it had spread more it might have persisted. But you can make that history and start those traditions. If they appeal to enough people in your area, they'll grow and spread.
What James Hetfield of Metallica described as: "Lose myself in a crowded room, you fool, you fool, it'll be here soon".
Basically sometimes when I enter a party or an event, out of nowhere I can feel it sort of descending on me that I don't want to be here, I don't want to talk to anyone here, I don't want to do anything or be a part of anything.
And for no real reason - these can be work events, family events, even meeting up with friends sometimes.
I can just feel like a heaviness in my eye brows and I become hyper-aware of noises and it's like I get shrouded in a fog, almost like I'm in a hole. I'm aware of the noises but struggle to hear voices or discern speech, even when it's right next to me.
I get this too, I think it’s like an audio processing issue. I might be having a really lovely conversation with someone right next to me and they can be talking plenty loud, but then there’s a TV on the other side of the room playing super quietly, and suddenly I realise I missed half of what the person said but I know exactly what was happening on the TV
Here's one I've felt for a long time but only just recently learned that there is a name for it, thanks to Depths of Wikipedia on Bluesky: Resistentialism.
I get it most while in the kitchen. Some days it just seems that the knives and bowls are out to get me, I'm constantly dropping things or sloshing things or fumbling things. Surely the explanation can't be that I have clumsy days and dextrous days - the objects must be conniving!
Not quite the same, but Terry Pratchett named and identified the deity anoia who specifically relates to tools/utensils that get stuck in drawers.
Oooh that's a fun new word! And there's a Twilight Zone episode about it, called A Thing About Machines. Underrated episode, imo.
Sometimes I just feel like shit and have an impulse to be an asshole. I feel like my life sucks, everyone and everything is out to get me, my house sucks, my relationship sucks, my friends suck, my job sucks. Anyone who talks to me, I just want to be cruel and mean to. I am inconvenienced by everything, and I can't snap out of it. This usually lasts half a day or so, and probably happens once or twice a month. The thing is, I KNOW when I'm in a mood like this, and even during it I can logically reason that I don't hate all of those things, but I really feel like I do. I can usually force myself to not be an asshole even though I want to.
It's almost like the logical part of my brain is being a parent, holding back the lizard, asshole part.
No idea if there's a word to describe that.
I know this one well, and have come to think of it as orbiting around "mean", "defensive", and "bitter". Mean as an attitude, not judgment, but in the sense of focusing on the short term, self-centeredness, uncompassionate. Feeling small in spirit. Because like you say, it isn't some shift in reality, there's no desire to act cruelly, it just feels easy, or like kindness would be pointless.
To be clear: these are my thoughts about what I've experienced that seems very similar to what you've described, not at all a matter of criticism or judgment. We may be talking about different things, and if my internal labels come across as harsh or misplaced, I apologize.
I know that feeling very well. Usually its when i'm hungry but don't realize it. If I then get some food it disappeard nearly instantly.
Hangry?
I have recurring nightmares where my body is infinitely folded. That does not hurt, but after each fold I become smaller to the point where I am a subatomic particle. I don't think about atoms in the dream, that is just my interpretation. Eventually I cease to have length or mass, and only a sliver of consciousness remains to witness its own dissolution.
It is like existing and not existing. I don't have a word for it. I can barely describe it.
That nightmare sometimes takes the form of a night terror associated with sonambulism. So all these sensations are also present fully while I am awake as a continuation of the nightmare.
@RoyalHenOil , I remember you talked about using the power of self taught lucid dreaming to overcome a nightmare, I think? Is that something you could possibly try, lou?
What if you pause the shrinking so you're merely "fun" sized, like small enough to ride a plane for free inside your friend's carryon. Or small enough to enjoy mini meals for nearly free? The bed at home is now a trampoline park! Ride cute pets! Oh boy epic mounts! Doll fashion!
I want to say I have the same sockless feeling very often. I used to never wear socks when I was a kid. Funny to think about that.
I recently have been thinking about something as well, that I find hard to put into words, but I will try anyways.
I am a "perpetual traveler" or "digital nomad" or whatever you want to call it. I skip every winter at the moment, I have started a couple years ago. I have now lived in many places, and I feel at home in a lot of them. It's a weird feeling, that I find odd, since my family never moved (like my parents still live in the place where I lived since I was born). I have never traveled much as a kid, we only ever stayed near home, or went to my family in turkey where we spent the whole summer break. When I turned 19 I finished high school and did a gap year in Australia. I lived in Sydney for ~5 months and in Townsville for 5.
I spent the other time traveling around and I worked most of the time. It’s been a while (13 years) so I don’t feel it as strongly, but I felt very at home in Sydney and in Townsville. I then mostly stayed at home again, until I did a 6 month internship in the US, where I lived with a family, and now I feel at home there too. I.e.. thinking about that place makes me feel like I am at home. i’ve moved twice in Germany since, and planted some roots in 2 cities too, but now comes the weird part:
Now, since giving up my permanent residence, I’ve been to a few places for 2-3 weeks or a couple of months. Now I have this feeling like I am at home in Thailand (Bangkok, Koh Phangan, Koh Lanta), Vietnam (Da Nang) and Japan (Okinawa mostly). I (and my girlfriend) visit countries, but we don’t see a lot of different places, we mostly just choose a couple of places and stay there for weeks at a time. It’s a weird feeling, because you just know the people, and they know you. Most recently I experienced this in Koh Lanta (I left there on Sunday). Walking around the street and greeting tons of people, like I am part of the community. And now I am in Koh Phangan again and it’s like I’m seeing a ton of old friends again.
I don’t know. I guess in short I wonder if that’s a normal feeling. Like “feeling at home in a lot of different places”
It’s a nice feeling, but also weird.
I wonder if this sockless phenomenon is related to the pro gamer urge to remove their shoes - "foot prisons", is what they call them.
I hate socks because they make my toes feel like they are suffocating (... Even though toes don't breathe? I don't know). Foot prison feels like a good descriptor for that too.
Wonder if there's a correlation to gamers who are used to playing at home where they don't wear shoes? Like, if you always trained one way, anything different is a distraction
Like trying to drive in different shoes! Sometimes in new shoes I find that I catch the side of the pedals with my feet because I've got the muscle memory locked in to exactly the distance I need to move to work with my last shoes. Maybe these gamers having shoes on notice the difference when they shift around and suddenly they're tripping over their own feet in their chairs.
Or even just the normal rate at which their feet disappate heat. You want your brain 100% on the game, and don't want reports of feet muscles experiencing above normal temps or your skin reporting something touching them.
Being on a plane at night with an eye mask on. It's an entirely unique feeling where I get tingles down my spine and become euphoric as I let my mind wander. No idea why this happens. Maybe the sound of the plane and the total blackout is like some strange kind of sensory deprivation.
If I was born 200 years earlier I would have never discovered that state of mind. I wonder what I'm missing out on not being born 200 years later.
Oh boy, the overwhelming becoming-yourself-again feeling of when your memories are uploaded back into your just-printed body, as every sliver of memory and every morsel of emotion and every waft of consciousness bump past each other on their way in, before they settle into their usual structured place that they belong.
It’s difficult to describe, but it’s kinda like synesthesia turned up to 100. When the last time you hugged grandma collides with the year that measles was finally eradicated and they both get smushed up against your memory of just how much pressure you can apply when tightening the screws in cheap furniture before the wood splinters, and suddenly you’re actually thinking about just how much pressure to apply to measles before your grandma is eradicated, and it makes no sense until suddenly it all falls into place.
If you could feel emotion in that moment, you might name it bewilderment, but actually I think it’s a lot closer to that look you see on a baby’s face the first time they experience something completely new. They don’t have room for the emotion of bewilderment, because every neurone in their brain is working overdrive in order to synthesise this brand new experience into a cohesive whole. You don’t have room for emotions or even confusion, because you’re experiencing your entire life, one neurone at a time, and all crammed in together at once.
It feels like that, and you have no sense of time, so it takes forever and also it’s over in the blink of an eye, and both are true at once.
(Thanks for unintentionally giving me an opportunity to flex creative writing, I forgot how much I missed doing this, even if it’s not very good yet)
I love this so, so much :D
Especially that we can print entire human bodies but we stuck it out with cheap furniture.
Ah, see this is where leaving bits up to the reader can enrich the story so much further! My mental model as I was writing was that the grandma dying and the cheap furniture were memories from before bodyprinting was available, but leaving it open was a good call because I much prefer your interpretation!
(Also, I hope the influence wasn’t way too obvious but the implanted memories and bodyprinting were heavily inspired by recently watching Mickey17 — it’s a little more trippy than I expected, but I recommend watching it if you have the opportunity and you like movies! I had a lot of fun with it!)
(Edit: you too @hobblyhoy, if you enjoy watching sci-fi movies, this one didn’t hit my “but that’s not how it works” bell too much, although the sci-fi setting is not completely at the forefront of the story)
Could I request a short blurb on the joys of un-extincting beloved species and healing certain biomes? I could really use some hope for the future given current attitudes about conservation.... Christopher Tin (composer for Civ series) wrote an album of orchestral songs, The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy, which ive only listened to once because I couldn't stop crying. Even thinking about one of the tracks, Flocks A Mile Wide, make me tear up.
I was greatly inspired by your mini story :) been thinking about it for a couple days. Thank you.
As someone who pretty much exclusively reads hard sci-fi.. I loved it! You have some real skill there.
Thank you, I appreciate your support!
I certainly enjoy it, but I don’t think I could ever hold enough things together to write a short story, let alone a novel. Tiny snippets in random threads, though, I can probably keep doing.
When I was quite young, I flew Transpacific on a night flight. To my utter surprise the FAs were walking down the aisle offering cups of instant noodles: noodles being one of my favorite things on the planet and cup noodles being one of those "we have noodles at home" luxuries we never buy.
I love flying. It's like being in your parents car at night thing, as mentioned here, but also a much longer journey and you can get up and walk around and there's snacks/drinks and a completely different kind of scenery outside.
It's crazy to think that 200 years ago people wouldn't have had flight, nor night driving down a highway, nor even ships large enough you wouldn't throw up in that you'd ride for fun. Nor fresh fruit completely out of season flown to you from the other hemisphere. Nor the expectation that nearly all of your children will survive to adulthood and the young mother probably won't die. Or that when the neighbouring country has a suite of new and insane oligarchs, the war they're threatening likely won't involve them physically laying siege to our cities. It really has been breakneck speed.
I'm sure we will have teleportation and nearly unlimited energy figured out in 100, and hopefully by the second 100 we'll be working hard to restore the environment and un-extinct our species.
I love watching scenery from the air. If I were a different type of personality, and also given my age, a different gender, I could have become a commercial pilot. Flying over landscape is soothing.
Same same....I love looking at towns, fields, lakes, roads, nothing. I love looking at an atlas or map to try to put names to the scenery. Even at night i love watching dinky town lights or a solitary farm house. Just once, we flew over an area with the Northern Lights visibly dancing along the plane for a good 10 minutes, it was magical.
I've always dreamed of being FA. I would never want to be in charge of this many lives, and I don't mind being essentially a server. But yeah given my age :/ a secondary dream is to somehow come into enough money to buy an unlimited flight pass, but I shudder to think of the environmental cost I would personally be responsible for, so it's just as well that it's an occasional thing. I also found out recently that being in a small plane where we fly low and we can see a whole bunch more stuff is even better!
I've never read anything about this before, and the only person I've known who also gets this is my mom, oddly enough, but there's a very weird sensation I get when I'm on the verge of falling asleep, in a halfway-dreaming state almost, where my hands, feet, tongue and teeth feel... huge.
Remember those diagrams of the human sensory system that are scaled according to sensitivity? So you've got this weird-looking human with gigantic hands, feet, lips and tongue... that's how I feel, lying in bed. Like my jaw and tongue are massive, not heavy, just scaled disproportionately, and my hands and feet are bigger than the rest of my body combined. If I move, it goes away, but as soon as I stop moving and try to rest again, it comes back, until I finally fall asleep. Dreams are usually normal after that.
I had a series of night-terrors as a child after taking Tylenol for a fever, and I think that's when it started. Sometimes they are accompanied by half-dreams of metallic tastes and textures, like infinitely crumpled tin-foil, crushed down to the micro-roughness of pumice stone. This combined with the sensation of disproportion. It's not pleasant at all.
If anyone else gets this or knows what the hell it is, I'd like to learn more about it.